There are many forms of relationships important to individual lives, businesses and society. Examples of such relationships are marriage and family, work and business, and institutional and political. These relationships vary in their quality, i.e., the combination of the respective value or benefit the respective parties are gaining (separately and together) from the relationship at any period or moment of time. However, information as to the current circumstances of quality and the trends of quality within these relationships typically may be somewhat unknown or unconsidered, based upon limited, subjective perspectives, or include inaccurate assumptions by one, or both, of the parties.
Relationship quality, as described herein, refers to, within an affiliation of, or contextual connection of, people, or people and entities, the measurement of the magnitude of value being gained from that affiliation at a moment or period in time, based upon acceptable parameters of benefit as separately determined by each party, then combined holistically into a singular format that informs both parties, or others, for their benefit and utility.
The absence of continuously updated information of relationship quality leads to lost opportunities and misunderstandings, as well as to acute or chronic problems and unfortunate surprises within personal, commercial, institutional and political settings. There are attempts to address the problem historically; for example, workplaces use the convention of periodic “performance reviews” in limited, unidirectional attempts to convey the organization's perspective of quality from its viewpoint to the worker, while separately, the organization may seek to learn of the worker's viewpoint through “satisfaction surveys.” Unfortunately, these discrete approaches fail to accurately reveal the realities of the comprehensive and bidirectional nature of relationship quality.
Furthermore, there are needs of other third parties or persons to have more reliable and complete information about the quality of relationships within communities than is at present available. Examples include, but are not limited to, organizational leaders or marriage counselors.
In addition, in the absence of information about the quality of specific relationships, it is not possible to enjoy the additional benefit of using collectively-gathered information as reference or comparison for evaluating or judging the relative quality of a relationship or group of relationships against other similar relationships. Similarly, this information cannot be effectively used to better understand a particular relationship or relationships. Information regarding the respective views or perspectives of relationship quality would be of significant benefit in advance of entering or consummating relationships. This would provide value in various contexts, such as workplace hiring decisions, or premarital relationship prediction and decision guidance.